


the red world And corresponding red breezes

by birdbulletarrow



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Gen, Self-Harm, Suicide Attempt, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 16:29:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1311544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/birdbulletarrow/pseuds/birdbulletarrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The hollow in his chest, he thinks, is explained by the red pooled at their feet.</i>
</p><p>Pod goes to war.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the red world And corresponding red breezes

 

> The red world And corresponding red breezes  
>  Went on Geryon did not  
>  (ANNE CARSON)
> 
>  
> 
> He is sure he recognizes her. It is the only thing he is sure of in this world.  
>  (LA JETEE)

 

 

 

The world burns.

Two years into the war, Pod decides to join the service. Sansa is livid. They fight for weeks before she relents.

The day before he ships out for the first time, she takes a knife from the kitchen and walks into their bathroom. Pod follows on her heels and stands in the doorway, tense. Sansa pulls her shirt over her head. Undoes her bra. She lays them carefully over the edge of the bathtub before turning back to consider herself in the mirror. With a slight frown of concentration, she pulls a handful of her long hair taut in one hand and saws with the knife, drops the coil to the floor. She repeats the process until her remaining hair hangs jagged to her chin, around her ear lobes, just below the base of her skull. Pod takes the knife back to the kitchen and returns with scissors, trims the ends of her hair to even out the wild line of it. The hollow in his chest, he thinks, is explained by the red pooled at their feet. _Snip. Snip. Snip._ After he is finished, he brushes her clean, presses his palms to her waist, his mouth to the muscle of her shoulder, and closes his eyes. When he opens them, Sansa is staring at him in the mirror, weeping. 

 

 

 

That night, she wakes from a nightmare that feels like her time at the Vale. Though she already can’t remember the details, she is in the clutches of near panic, mingled fear and anger rising in her throat like bile. She shakes Pod awake. _I want you so much,_ she gasps _._ They fuck three times before the sun rises, with Sansa on top. Each time is more frantic than the last.

 

 

 

Brienne is born nine months later. Pod is allowed two weeks with them before he leaves again. Sansa no longer cries. Instead, she prays to the Mother and the Warrior, mourns her daughter’s namesake in the dark, mourns the names that unspool out of her. _Mother. Father. Robb. Jon. Rickon. Bran. Arya._ She will always stop there, she tells herself, no matter what happens.

 

 

 

Pod writes to Sansa every day. On paper at first, sent in the post. When the post system becomes spotty, then fails entirely, he continues his letters whenever he can, and burns them. He regrets this later, when paper has to be rationed, and regrets it more, when permissions for R&R leave are postponed indefinitely, and the end dates for all active tours of duty are rescheduled for a time TBD. He uses charcoal on stone, on the walls of bombed out buildings; he scratches a stick into dirt and, from the flap of his tent, watches the nightly chemical rains melt his words into mud. His letters to Sansa are recitations that keep him awake during the tedious radiation inoculation procedures; they are the prayers that help him fall asleep each night.

 

 

 

There is a memorable year he spends in the trenches when he is unable to summon enough words for his letters. His head is filled with sound he can never unhear, his hands are soaked with blood he can never scrub out, and it is all he can do to wrest _S a n s a_ and _B r i e n n e_ from the cacophony and waves of gore. He tries to yoke _P o d r i c k_ alongside their names because he knows Sansa would want him to, but it often makes him sick to do it. He traces the names into the muck of the trenches with his fingers, takes comfort in forming shapes that hold meaning, before he presses triggers and pulls pins to annihilate it. In the mess, he arranges defrosted corn kernels into the names on his plate before swallowing them whole, returning Gendry Waters’ bewildered glances from across the table with bland smiles and no explanation. And he mouths the names whereever and whenever it is dark--which, now, is almost everywhere, and almost always.

One time, when he is on the graveyard shift in the infirmary tent, he filches a disinfected scalpel and excuses himself to the latrine, where he gently slices _S S-P_ and _B P_ into the tender flesh of his arm near his pit.

The second time, he doesn’t bother with a disinfected anything, the cuts are neither careful nor light, and he forgets that he is carving to live.

Gendry somehow finds him before he gets too far. The larger man wrestles the pocket knife away and smashes its blade to bits against concrete. Then he tears part of Pod’s shirt and wraps his sliced-up arm with the ragged strips before hauling him outside and punching him hard--once, twice in the face. They brawl. Gendry wins quickly, then drags him all over camp to find a medic who will fix his arm without reporting him. It’s an unnecessary precaution. And, Pod thinks--as they stomp through the camp, his bloody appearance, ruined shirt, and Gendry’s furious stream of curses attracting alarmed looks from every quarter--a rather poorly executed one. Pod knows he won’t be discharged, for they can’t afford to discharge anyone physically able to fight at this particular juncture in the war. And anyway, as the old military joke went, _the suicidal have their uses when diligently monitored!_

Gendry ceases cursing long enough at that, and the crumpled look on the older man's face makes Pod laugh hysterically, and he cannot stop.

 

 

 

Gendry makes a point of listening to Pod’s letters to Sansa, whenever possible. It helps. After Gendry goes MIA behind enemy lines three years later, Pod pretends he can see his friend sitting across from him each night as he whispers his letters. That helps too. Sometimes, he writes to Gendry, different words that all mean the same thing: _Thank you. Come back. I’m sorry._ But Gendry never replies.

 

 

 

Pod returns to Sansa and Brienne for good after seven years, a shortened right leg, two missing fingers, and the immensely satisfying vision of his two medals of valor sailing out of sight after he flung them out of a helicopter.

Brienne is small, almost too delicate, for her age. And her Tully blue eyes are far too serious for a girl of six. She shrinks from him, will hardly speak to him. Pod avoids her too. He tells himself he is grateful for it, and doesn’t tell Sansa about his letters. When his wife sings bedtime songs to their daughter each night, he sits with his back against the hallway wall, listening at the door as their names fill his throat to choking, and the map of scars on his forearm twists alive with pain.

 

 

 

Brienne is nearly eight when she overcomes her shyness of him. She crawls into his lap one afternoon as though she’d never been afraid of him, nor he of her, and demands that he tell her the story of the princess who slew the mutant bear of Harrenhal and, oh yes, that one-handed prince who helped her out some. _And you’ve got to tell me the end! Did they live happily ever after?_

To his horror, Pod begins to cry, which makes Brienne wail in alarm.

He laughs, then cries some more when his daughter doesn’t leave but clings to his side, snuffling into his shirt.

After he recovers, he says, _I don’t know the end, sweetling. What do you think?_

Pod goes to bed early that night. Some time later, Sansa folds herself into his arms. He pretends to be asleep, but she isn’t fooled.

 _I just thought it was time to tell her where her name came from,_ she whispers. _But then I chickened out and made it into a fairytale. And I didn’t know how to finish it. That’s why she asked you today._

Pod finally looks at her.

Her eyes swim with tears. _Don’t be mad._

_I’m not. And I love you._

She fists her hands in his hair, and in between her fierce kisses, he mumbles into her mouth.

_I wrote you every day, letters and letters, there were so many, Sansa, did you hear any of them?_

_Yes. All of them. Oh my love. She would have been so proud of you._

He sobs. _You don't know that._

He says, _I should have died. But I missed you so much._

 

 

 

Rumors circulate for the rest of the war about the countless missing. Pod and Sansa’s favorites are the many surrounding the populous Disappeared Rebels, for among these rumors are traces of those they love: the cousin who raised Pod from a boy, who deals death to the cruel with nothing but the ferocity of his silent intent; Sansa’s sister, who has no face and infinite faces, is nowhere and everywhere; the prince who traded his royal blood for the ability to draw strength from fire and calls soldiers ( _like us_ ) his true brothers; and the first Brienne, whose eyes are sapphires, her heart the great North Star, her shadow a man with a golden hand.

Sansa knows well that it is a shattered generation--her and Pod’s generation--that has elevated groups like the Disappeared to the status of such myth in the space of years, but she remains hopeful that there is living truth--even if it is ugly truth--beneath abstraction. Every story has its origin. And every survivor has the stories they must cling to.

For survive they do. The war ends. Sansa and Pod and their children--Brienne, Ilyn, Arya, and Gendry--emigrate underground with what remains of the human race.

Pod wonders if they’ve doomed their children with their names. He will never tell Sansa this.

Sansa never allows her hair to grow out again. Though, when Pod isn’t looking, she will still run her fingers through it from scalp to end, half-expecting to find the missing length miraculously returned.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted December 2013; reposted 2014 with (minor) revisions. Eternal gratitude to the lovely people who commented/kudoed the first time around. This is my first fic; thanks for taking the time to read it, and I'd love to hear what you think. 
> 
> Massive props, respect, & shoutout to the awesome Jaime/Brienne + Podrick/Sansa fic, [Nights Without Armor](http://archiveofourown.org/works/887148) by [bratanimus](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bratanimus/pseuds/bratanimus). It's responsible for making me ship Podrick and Sansa because of how wonderfully they were written, and I pilfered the idea of Sansa cutting off her hair from it as well.


End file.
